ANOTHER DEMEHRI BYLINE

An article by Natasha Demehri, Class of 2012, fills most of the front cover of the Winter 2011 AAFP International Update Newsletter. The editor asked her to write something based on her poster presentation at the Global Health Workshop in Coral Gables last year. So she produced the article "Being the Change: Ending 'Duffle-Bag' Medicine."

Natasha wrote about the trip she and others from the College of Medicine took to post-war Northern Uganda in 2009. They didn't just swoop in for a few days and then leave. In addition to treating more than 1,700 patients, they also spent important time with the clinical officers, Uganda's version of U.S. physician's assistants. "Our most sustainable impact," she wrote, "was teaching the clinical officers through classes in infectious disease and medical care, permitting them to care for the local community after we left."

She concluded her article: "The impact of sustainable care must be recognized as the most priceless asset that we carry with us."

(Last year, Natasha wrote another piece on her trip to Uganda. It appeared in the January 2010 edition of EMR.)

STUDENT-ARTIST

Zach Folzenlogen, Class of 2013, submitted a piece of art titled "Reinvent Yourself" that has been accepted for publication in Academic Medicine. Last year, his art was featured on the cover of Developmental Cell.

 

POSTERS, ETC.

Brett Thomas, Class of 2014, presented the poster "Contributors to Success: Black Males in Medicine" with Associate Professor Eron Manusov, M.D., at the National Rural Health Association Annual Multiracial and Multicultural Conference in Tucson.

Geden Franck, Class of 2014 (pictured here), also presented a poster with Eron Manusov, M.D., at the National Rural Health Association Annual Multiracial and Multicultural Conference in Tucson. His poster was "The Effect of Socio-Economic Status and Race on Patient-Physician Trust Levels in Neighboring Gadsden and Leon County."

Brett Thomas also was one of the authors of an article accepted to Academic Medicine: "Contributors to Success: Black Males in Medicine." The other authors were Eron Manusov and Assistant Dean Helen Livingston, Ed.D.
 

POETRY

This is the poem that Rashad Sullivan, Class of 2013, read aloud at the Feb. 1 meeting in the auditorium.

How Far We Have Not Come

(Essays poetry and discourse of love and progression)

by Rashad J. Sullivan

The road to nowhere leads to the coveted distension of evolution?s dimensions outside the boundaries of our soul?s relentless need to fill the void of our understanding of our beginnings? look how far we have yet to evolve our thinking?

From spoken word into existence the persistence of darkness evades the scope of our vision to see how far from which we came in light of the sight of seeing the mistakes we made?

Lapidation for our transgressions in waiting with hopes that we would sin no more once we cease to exist? how far have those stones been thrown that they would miss the intent of their meaning and not restore the souls of those being stoned?look at how far we have not come to justice

Color barriers are often crossed when stereotypical thoughts are lost and dropped how long has it been since the last of the strange fruit was hanged to rot? Over 400 years of oppression continues in the mis-educated minds of the neglected, how far we have not come to realize a dream deferred should be protected?

How far we have not come to allow the power of names to lose their meaning being called nothing is the same as being told you are the very thing that has no existence and no being?how long must we go on like this?

How long will it be before the length of your journey is filled with the contingency of compromise and untold truths to evade the telling of lies? when will the end become the beginning again

Go where you have not gone and do what you have not done to come as far as you have not come?keeping going a little further your destination is shorter than the distance between the two lines that divide that which is good from that which is better?

How far have we not come to let our forever escape the ramparts of our minds to be forgotten in the days where we have wandered throughout time to find our legacy in our seeds that were left behind?

We were but we are not anymore?why be less than what you have come this far to explore

Look at how far you have come and then go some more? I urge you to move forward in progression.